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Their View: No easy way for police to tell when someone is lying

By Bill Varuola / For the Sun-News

Posted:
02/02/2013 02:02:58 AM MST

Over the 16 years I spent teaching in the Doña Ana County Juvenile Detention Center, I wanted to know as much as I could about the entire juvenile adjudication process. I kept my own copy of the New Mexico Children's Code and edited it over time.

I became familiar with judges and court procedure and even became party to it when it was helpful to my students. I communicated with the juvenile probation officers and worked with them before the factory model took sway in the classroom. To a lesser degree, I worked with attorneys, both private and public defenders, all to the benefit of my students.
I read extensively about police procedure and forensic science so that I might better understand that aspect of what my students experienced and I joined several corrections discussion groups on the Internet, in part to learn general considerations, in part to glean any information about corrections education.

I even got a book on standards for operating a juvenile detention center, which was very informative and a constant source of fascination.

In order for my students to be in a frame of mind to do school work, it was important that they be at ease with their legal circumstances, that all their questions be answered and that they not be distracted to too great a degree by their cases.

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So I would clear up the rough edges and settle them down with the necessary information from someone who otherwise might not come to visit for a week or two as we would get down to work.

My students were not always ready, academically, to step in to the classroom. Generally and with a few exceptions, their effective formal educations hovered somewhere around the fourth or fifth grade. Many entered the Detention Center as ninth-grade students having just emerged from middle school, an acknowledged culprit through which an unmotivated student could pass and make very little substantial progress, especially if they had taken an anti-social bent.

So poor students with criminal circumstances foremost in their minds came to class looking to be distracted but not necessarily taught. Experience taught that a helpful approach was that of making students aware of the juvenile justice system, their place in it and what they might expect given the nature of their offense and their previous experience. Again, I would refer to their public defender or attorney and probation officer whenever feasible.

In these last few months, though, some of the traditional standards of the criminal system have been put into question, and I'm more than a little interested. We all know that the worst kind of evidence is eyewitness testimony, which can impress a jury or judge, but is unreliable and easily influenced. The ease with which third parties can introduce false memories to witnesses is universally acknowledged. We are constantly filling in gaps in our own knowledge and reinterpreting things to build on our knowledge base. What is actually seen is often lost in the clutter.

Now, three other mainstays of the criminal justice system are being looked at askance: Can we really tell when someone's lying, can criminal lineups be trusted, and are fingerprints fool proof?

Again, it is not wise to rely on memory in eyewitness identification, which is what lineups, picture and live, amount to.

Prosecutors rely on them, but if a lineup relies on eyewitnesses, then it is a very fragile tool indeed.

And the aura we have granted fingerprints is also becoming suspect. There is no solid, scientific basis for the assertion that fingerprints are unique. The same certainty that a particular bullet came from a particular gun is also being questioned because there's no apparent scientific basis that is legally defensible. Standards are being sought that allow such things to be comparable or consistent, rather than certain, but still carry legal utility.

The area that has me most concerned is when we dare to know someone is lying or telling the truth, and the means used to determine both. I mentioned this some months ago, but I've done a little more reading on the matter.

Sometimes the police will use a polygraph as a means of coming to a preliminary conclusion about truthfulness. It's used to winnow the field, not as evidence, but it is a machine that does not take into account the variations in human response to stimuli.

Further, there is no research that supports the traditional reliance on body language, facial expressions, mannerisms, etc. that police refer to during interrogations — even "gut feelings" — that police believe imbues them with the ability to determine that someone is lying and, thus, guilty.

What research there is indicates that such an approach lowers accuracy of judgment; that innocent people react under questioning in ways that are indistinguishable from someone who is lying.

Bill Varuola is longtime resident of Las Cruces who recently retired as a teacher at the Doña Ana County Juvenile Detention Center.

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